


317. shadow play

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [137]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-30 22:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8552509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: At headquarters-which-is-not-HQ-no-matter-how-many-times-they-tell-Helena-it-is, training happens on Tuesdays.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [8\. chameleons](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8543149) by [piggy09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09). 



At headquarters-which-is-not-HQ-no-matter-how-many-times-they-tell-Helena-it-is, training happens on Tuesdays. Helena likes training because it means only one day until Wednesday, when there is pudding. The actual training itself she doesn’t like as much, although she doesn’t _not_ like it – mostly for her it is a lot of flying through hoops and punching targets and watching Alison crush things before Rachel can burn them or Cosima smash them before anyone else can do anything. Not very fun.

But today Sarah is there, and so maybe it’ll be fun after all.

She’s hovering (not _actually_ hovering! _Helena_ is actually hovering, a foot or so off the ground) (this is what is called a Figure Of Speech) by the wall, arms and legs going in and out. Across the gym Rachel glares at her and lights both her hands on fire and then – poof! – Sarah is gone.

Helena lets one foot hit the ground and then leaps up again and bounces that way over towards the wall. She flails her hands a little bit and: there, Sarah.

“Ow,” Sarah says, voice muffled.

“Are you scared of Rachel?” Helena says. “Don’t worry. She gets tired before she can burn a whole person. It makes her very angry but there is nothing she can do about it.”

Sarah doesn’t say anything. Helena flails her hand around to make sure she’s still there.

“ _Ow_ ,” Sarah says again. “Cut it out. I’m just here ‘cause they said I couldn’t eat until they’d seen what I can do. Bloody psychos. Like I’m their bloody lab rat or somethin’.” Helena wishes she could see Sarah’s face, so she could tell if Sarah actually meant those words. She feels like she can hear something in Sarah’s voice that says _I want to be here,_ I _want to see what I can do_ , but maybe that’s just Helena thinking Sarah’s words for her. She doesn’t know.

“Then you should go train,” Helena says. “Then you can eat! Tuesday there is no pudding but there is meatloaf. Have you ever had meatloaf. It is a loaf, but it is made of meat. Very tasty.”

“Yeah, sounds great,” Sarah mutters. She doesn’t say anything else. Helena flails her hands around and realizes Sarah is gone. She thinks to herself a sound that is something like _hrm_ and then flaps her wings once, twice, and heads for the hoops strung from the ceiling.

* * *

She beats her own personal record and then is mostly bored, so she does a few barrel rolls and then death-drops just to see if she can and then perches on one of the hoops and watches the ground. Rachel is throwing fireballs at Cosima; Cosima’s laughing happily, like it’s a training exercise, but Helena is pretty sure Rachel is actually trying to hit her. Helena meets Alison’s eyes and shrugs. Alison shoots her a disappointed frown, bends a dumbell in half and then into a neat bow. She doesn’t take her eyes off Rachel, so: it’s not Helena’s problem anymore.

She skips a few hoops and then flaps to the top of the partition that separates one area of the gym from another. It’s blocked off at the bottom – there’s a door, but it’s locked – and so no one but Helena can see Sarah training on the other side of the wall.

“Training” is maybe a strong word. One of the caretakers is saying something soothing to Sarah, but Sarah is patchwork anyways. Helena can’t tell if she’s supposed to be here or gone. She isn’t either of them. There’s a series of walls and moving patterns and moving, creaking targets and Sarah can’t go through them because Sarah is somewhere in between, too gone to be here, too here to be gone. Sad.

Helena always knew how to fly. The earliest thing she can remember is someone throwing her out of a window, because she was an abomination-of-God, and then she clawed her way up the sky and flew away. She doesn’t remember how old she was then. She’s sort of stopped keeping track. When she got here they gave her a birthday, because they said she needed one for the paperwork, and so Helena knows it has been seven birthdays since she got here. But that’s all she knows.

She can’t imagine if her wings fought her. If they pulled her away when she wanted to stay, and pinned her down when she wanted to go. Her heart aches for Sarah, down there on the ground, eyes panicked and fingers twitching and still too real to bear.

“Excuse me!” calls Alison’s voice, high and shrill from the gym floor below. “Excuse me, can someone get Helena down from up there? She’s shirking her training, _again_.”

“Who actually says shirking,” Cosima says, voice carrying to Helena’s height, and then Helena hears a hiss of pain and “Seriously, you’re still trying to light me on fire? Do you, like, not get the idea of training exercise or _what_.”

Then everything mostly turns into bickering, and Helena looks back over to the other side of the wall. Sarah is looking right at her; there’s a smile in the corner of her mouth, and she almost looks like she’s impressed.

Helena puts a finger to her lips. _Shh_.

Sarah tilts her head to the side and her eyes dart over to a patch of ceiling. Her smile gets bigger, bigger, like she’s considering something, like she’s listening to a song Helena can’t hear. Then her gaze goes back to Helena.

She puts her finger to her lips, just like Helena’s, and then she flickers and she’s all the way gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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